Star Trek meme: Day 23 - Best Trek Tech

[lizbee]

Obviously it's the replicator, our ticket to fully automated luxury gay space communism.

As long as we're doing prequels, one of the stories I want to see is the evolution from whatever vaguely capitalist system existed between First Contact to what we have by Discovery's era. Because surely the entire human diaspora didn't embrace the new technology right away? I feel like this is a potentially interesting story, although maybe only to me.

The great mystery of replicators: why, in a world where you can make any article of clothing you dream of, everyone's wearing jumpsuits instead of dressing like Lady Gaga every day. Only Lwaxana Troi and Amanda Grayson have embraced the full potential of the technology.



Day 24 - Best Overall Space Vessel
Day 25 - Favorite Discovery Episode
Day 26 - Planet You Would Most Like To Visit
Day 27 - Character You Would Date
Day 28 - Name Your Own Starship
Day 29 - Favorite Trek Quote
Day 30 - Favorite Trek Series

Comments

[pauraque]

It's not just you! I would love love love a story about the invention and dissemination of the replicator and its role in the creation of a post-scarcity society. Because once it's established, it looks great, but what about that whole middle part where some people would have embraced it, but others would have been terrified of such a monumental economic change? Wealthy people and those who controlled material resources would have been faced with losing the basis of their power. People whose cultural or personal beliefs placed value on profit and paid employment would have thought society was crumbling and everyone would be lazy and never work again. (Given real-world counterarguments to proposals like Universal Basic Income, I think it is clear that a lot of people genuinely think that if money weren't a concern, nobody would ever do anything.)

There's an episode of Venture Bros. that deals with the invention of teleportation being suppressed because it threatens the travel, transportation, and shipping industries, and powerful people don't want that. I imagine the replicator, which threatens so much more than that, would meet with similar resistance.